"There's a law against being a public nuisance," Bucky Cantor in NEMESIS

Philip Roth's new novel NEMESIS is set in Newark, New Jersey in the 1940s during a polio epidemic.  The anti-hero of the novel is Bucky Cantor.  When the wiseass Italian kids come from outside the neighborhood onto the playground Cantor oversees, he stands toe to toe with them, all 5'5" of him.  He tells them loud and clear, when they joke that they are there to bring polio:

"Look, polio is not a joke.  And there's a law against being a public nuisance."

Since there is still one big juicy lead paint public nuisance class action lawsuit pending in Santa Clara, California, Roth might sell some books by doing a YouTube on what "public nuisance" constituted in the old neighborhood. 

In Jersey City, a bus ride from Newark, where I grew up, "public nuisance" was the woman who got a, HORROR, divorce. 

 

That upset the whole equilibrium of Catholicville where women stayed married, had too many children at the Margaret Hague, and made their husbands take the pledge annually in Church that they would not drink alcohol. Everyone in that neighborhood, including me, wound up in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Comments

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[Bada Bing Crosby]

Hey I was born in Margaret Hague and wound up in AA too!